Angelina Jolie just wants a "fair [divorce] trial based on facts".
The 45-year-old actress recently filed court documents asking for Judge John W. Ouderkirk to be disqualified from her and Brad Pitt’s divorce case, because she claims he failed to disclose his business relationships with her ex-husband’s attorneys and Angelina’s lawyer says the star wants "transparency and impartiality".
Samantha Bley DeJean told Us Weekly: "All my client is asking for is a fair trial based on facts, with no special favours extended to either side. The only way litigants can trust the process is for everyone involved to ensure that there’s transparency and impartiality."
Meanwhile, Brad’s lawyers have called Angelina’s court filing a "thinly veiled attempt by Jolie to delay the adjudication of long-pending custody issues in this case".
Explaining that Judge Ouderkirk presided over Jolie and Pitt’s 2014 wedding, Brad’s lawyers said: "Judge Ouderkirk has had a well-documented history with the parties to this proceeding their counsel, including, without limitation, being hand-selected by Jolie to preside over the couple’s nuptials in 2014 and serving as a neutral in several matters involving attorneys on both sides of this case.
"Judge Ouderkirk has also accepted additional new engagements involving opposing counsel during the pendency of this action – a fact fully disclosed to Jolie, and still she has never objected to his continued involvement in this proceeding until now.
"On the contrary, Jolie has stipulated three times to extend Judge Ouderkirk’s appointment. [This is] an abrupt cry of judicial bias [that] reeks of bad faith and desperation."
And Brad’s lawyers added that his and Angelina’s six children – Maddox, 19, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12 – are "the individuals hurt most by Jolie’s transparently tactical gambit as they continue to be deprived over a resolution to these custody issues. Therefore Jolie’s motion should be denied".
Angelina’s motion to dismiss the judge, came after her lawyer Bley DeJean discovered that he had an "ongoing professional and financial relationship" with Pitt’s attorneys Anne C. Kiley and Lance Spiegel.
It is claimed that the judge worked on a number of cases for Pitt’s lead attorney Spiegel and one for his other attorney Kiley, which were not disclosed.
Brad, 56, and Angelina were in a relationship for a decade before they got married in 2014. They were declared legally divorced in April 2019, but parts of their case remain unresolved.